Photo of Tower 63 from the Tom Kline Collection
Crossing of the Trinity & Brazos Valley Railroad and the Houston & Texas Central Railroad
Photo of Tower 63 from the Tom Kline Collection
Mexia was founded in 1870 by the Houston & Texas Central (H&TC) Railway building north from Hearne, and was named for the original owner of an 1833 land grant in this area. Within 15 years, prosperity brought by the railroad had caused the town to grow to 2,000 residents and become an important supply center for area farmers. In 1904, the Trinity & Brazos Valley (T&BV) Railroad, building southeast from Cleburne and Hillsboro, entered Mexia from the northwest and terminated for a couple of years. During this period, the T&BV was taken over by B. F. Yoakum and became part of his rail empire which included the Rock Island and Frisco railroads. Yoakum also had substantial railroad properties in south Texas known as the Gulf Coast Lines, and his Frisco and Rock Island railroads had already entered Texas from the north. Since Yoakum lacked a connecting line between north and south Texas, the traffic between these lines was lost to Southern Pacific (SP) which owned the H&TC route between Houston and Dallas. Under Yoakum, the T&BV charter was modified to include plans to build east a short distance to Teague, and from there, north to Dallas and south to Houston to create a connecting railroad for the Gulf Coast Lines to the south and the Frisco/Rock Island lines to the north. Furthermore, the route he surveyed would be much faster between Houston and Dallas than the H&TC route via Hearne and Mexia. The T&BV line paralleled the H&TC line through Mexia on the west side, and in 1906, moved across the H&TC at a site that became known as Springfield. [The original town of Springfield was the county seat of Limestone County and was located west of the railroad near Fort Parker, but was bypassed in 1870 by the H&TC. It soon lost its county seat and became a ghost town as Mexia and other towns grew larger.] From the crossing at Springfield, the T&BV continued east to Teague, and from there, construction proceeded in both directions to Houston and Waxahachie (where rights on the Katy could be used to enter Dallas).
Yoakum's moves created a major problem for SP which was controlled by E. H. Harriman. SP stood to lose a substantial volume of overhead traffic if Yoakum succeeded in building a better line between Houston and Dallas. Harriman already blamed Yoakum for the Railroad Commission's investigation into south Texas railroads that had resulted in SP being forced to relinquish control of the San Antonio & Aransas Pass railroad in December, 1903. At that time, Harriman had threatened to parallel any new lines Yoakum built in Texas, but Yoakum was one step ahead, building a new and better line that would severely impact H&TC traffic. Harriman decided to act by building his own new line, the Mexia - Nelleva Cutoff, which would shorten the distance between Houston and Dallas. This 94-mile line was constructed in 1907; the new H&TC right-of-way paralleled the new T&BV right-of-way for much of the route. For the 42 miles between Iola and Jewett, the railroads literally ran side by side.
The Mexia - Nelleva Cutoff re-entered the H&TC main line 1.5 miles south of Tower 63. By 1933, the Cutoff was abandoned, a failure due to a combination of circumstances. And although Yoakum's rail empire had crashed causing a lengthy receivership for the T&BV, the rail line remained intact and was taken over by the Burlington-Rock Island (B-RI) Railroad, a paper railroad created to acquire the T&BV when the receivership ended in 1930. The B-RI abandoned the line from Mexia to Cleburne, but the line to Teague remained active until 1976. At that time, the interlocker at Tower 63 was decommissioned. The H&TC line remains very active as a Union Pacific main line, and the T&BV route between Houston and Waxahachie has survived as a BNSF main line. The B-RI line between Teague and Mexia is heavily overgrown. And today, cars and trucks, instead of trains, roam the Mexia - Nelleva Cutoff. Approximately 71 miles of the Cutoff was acquired by the Texas Highway Department as a right-of-way for Farm Road 39 between Mexia and Iola.
Tom Kline describes the photo at the top of the page:
"It's a shot of the Mexia Turn headed back to Teague after crossing the SP. I do not know who the photographer was but he was the engineer on the local powered by an FW&D SD7 who took it while waiting for his brakeman to board the wooden outside braced Rock Island caboose. You can see him waving a highball as he steps aboard. This photo came from engineer Bob James - a longtime employee of the B-RI who believes the date to be in the early '60's, perhaps 1962. We speculated the reason for this photo may be that the tower was on borrowed time and was slated to be removed soon, but that is just a guess."
